International Activity Roundup

Some of our region’s biggest companies have been making waves out on the global waters, and we’ve rounded them up for you!

Starbucks opens its first store in Colombia

Starbucks opening a new store is nothing new, the company has over 23,000 stores in 64 countries around the world. In fact it opens on average two new stores every day. But yesterday’s new store opening is significant for being the first one in Colombia – the country where Starbucks sources most of its coffee beans. Despite not having had a store in Colombia until yesterday, Starbuck’s relationship with the country goes way back. It started buying Colombian beans 43 years ago, when Starbucks was just one coffee shop in Pike’s Place Market. Today, Starbucks is the largest single buyer of Colombian coffee.

The new store, which is in the capital of Bogota, also has a neat distinction as the only Starbucks store that sells only locally sourced coffee. It is over 2,700 square feet and 3 stories tall. CEO Howard Schultz was on hand for the opening ceremony.

Amazon begins 2-day shipping in the United Kingdom

The much-beloved 2-day Amazon Prime shipping is coming to the United Kingdom, where shipments were previously arriving on average 3-7 days after ordering. Over a million products will be eligible for Prime immediately, with the hope of that increasing to 3 million by the end of the year. Overall there are approximately 120 million items for sale on Amazon’s UK website.

The launch of the 2-day delivery is another step by Amazon to establish itself as the #1 online retailer of choice in not just the UK but also in Europe. “This is another significant step towards what Amazon believes providing the best customer offering across Europe should look like,” said Xavier Garambois, Vice President Retail, Amazon EU Sàrl

Boeing and Washington State at Farnborough

Boeing has been active at the Farnborough Air Show taking place this week near London, and tallying up airplane orders by the hundreds. To be more specific, it has 201 orders and commitments for new planes worth $40.2 billion. The largest order came from Qatar Airways which finalized an agreement to buy 50 of the 777-9X’s.

Boeing wasn’t the only one there – Governor Inslee and a delegation of aerospace companies from Washington State were also at Farnborough to promote the state’s industry and create partnerships. As we previously reported, Governor Inslee was able to announce the creation of a new flight center for Japan’s Mitsubishi at Moses Lake.

This entry was posted
on Thursday, July 17th, 2014 at 10:09 am and is filed under International News.
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